The Eidos
Montreal Community Website has a community Q&A about the upcoming Thief
reboot, answering questions from eager fans of the franchise (thanks
PC Gamer). The topic this time around is the removal of the planned XP
system from the game, a decision the developers explain while dropping a hint
they may have something positive to say about QTEs in the future:

Why
was it removed?

Nic: At first, we wanted to outline the progression of the player with XP,
but it was reducing our motivation to steal. The main goal of a thief should be
to gain loot. Garrett is already the Master Thief, so we saw no need to have XP
as a core mechanic.

Daniel: We wanted to put emphasis on stealing things, and put the rewards
on the stealing aspect. We want to allow the player to decide the "how to" – we
shouldn't judge how the player wants to achieve their goal, only reward them for
achieving it.

The reaction from fans to the "Headshot XP" pop-up in the E3 gameplay demo
was fairly negative. Did that have an impact on the decision to remove it from
the game?

Daniel: Fans might be surprised how often the devs go to the forum to see
how things are perceived in the "real world". This feedback is extremely
valuable to us, so as you can imagine, the consistent reaction to the XP system
was something that indicated we needed to revisit some design decisions.

Nic: It is more a design decision to add to our economy system and entice
the player to steal more. But yes, the E3 reaction was right, rewarding killing
like that was wrong for a Master Thief.

How will Garrett progress through the game without XP?

Nic: The goal is to use gold to buy elements to progress, to encourage the
player to steal. The player will be able to choose how to spend money, for more
stealthy or more aggressive tools.

Daniel: It was always possible to play without using XP, like it is still
possible to play through the game without killing anyone or even spending any
coin (though it isn't going to be easy!)

Thanks guys, this was very instructive. And wait until you hear what they have
to say about QTEs...

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Thief was never the pinnacle of emergent gameplay, though. The ability to manually jump almost never allowed you to reach areas you weren't supposed to go. While AC-style traversal requires less skill than manual jumping, Thief isn't a platformer so does it really matter? As long as you can get where you want to go, that's good enough for me. As in the previous games, the level designers ultimately decide where you can and cannot go regardless of whether jumping is contextual.

And saying you can play Thief like CoD is really going overboard. Taking out isolated guards may be simple enough but I seriously doubt you'll be able to just run and gun, especially on the highest difficulty. People made the same criticisms about Blacklist before it came out and on the highest difficulty, running and gunning in that game just doesn't work.

You also say that the game focuses on taking out guards, which really isn't true at all. In most of the demos they've shown, the player sneaks past almost every guard.

The only real concern I have about the game is the AI, which is a bit spotty if hands-on reports are accurate. Hopefully that will be resolved before the game's release.